Librarians Receive Baseball Research Award for Book on Fans' Deaths

Quick Facts

The awards are given annually to recognize outstanding baseball research published in the previous calendar year in areas other than history and biography. Robert M. Gorman and David Weeks won for “Death at the Ballpark: A Comprehensive Study of Game-Related Fatalities 1862-2007,” (McFarland).

Robert Gorman

David Weeks

ROCK HILL, S.C. - Two Winthrop University librarians recently received the Sporting News-Society for American Baseball Researchaward for their book chronicling fan deaths at baseball parks.

The awards are given annually to recognize outstanding baseball research published in the previous calendar year in areas other than history and biography. The winners will be honored at the society’s national convention, August 5-8, at the Sheraton Atlanta.

Gorman is head of the reference department at the Ida Jane Dacus Library at Winthrop. He is currently at work on a history of the South Bend Blue Sox, one of the original four teams in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

Weeks is an associate professor and coordinator of library instruction at Dacus Library, where he teaches research classes and provides research assistance to faculty and students. Gorman and Weeks’ article “Foul Play: Fan Fatalities in Twentieth-Century Organized Baseball,” which appeared in the fall 2003 issue of “Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture,” received the 2003 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award.

Pajot is a lifelong resident of Milwaukee and a retired City of Milwaukee police officer. In addition to publishing articles on Milwaukee's baseball history in local papers, he published "The Greatest Baseball Game Ever Played Anywhere” in the April 2009 issue of the “Wisconsin Magazine of History.”

Sutter is a writer and artist who divides her time between the Appalachian and the Rocky Mountains. Her main research interest is pre-expansion baseball, particularly the unrecognized players in the semipro and minor leagues of days past.

The Sporting News sponsors the $200 cash awards that accompany the honor.

The Society for American Baseball Research is an international, member-driven organization whose mission is to foster the research, preservation, and dissemination of the history and record of baseball. More information is available on itswebsite.